Heavy transportation machinery including motor vehicles such as light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty trucks for personal and commercial use, and off-highway equipment and vehicles are typically constructed and assembled via separate subassemblies. One such subassembly is the motor cooling system which includes a front or side mounted fan for certain operation requirements. An additional subassembly is the radiator and cooling assembly. Both of these subassemblies are intended to be mated such that the fan facilitates in drawing air through the radiator assembly for facilitating in the cooling of the engine. There are a variety of fans used in these types of applications such as axial-flow fans, radial-flow fans, mixed-flow fans and high-efficiency hybrid-flow fans. Additionally, in the radiator or cooling assembly, it is common to include a ring shroud or cowling that surrounds the fan and which is intended for increasing the fan efficiency and reducing the sound of the operation of the fan.
An integral feature of the manufacturing of these subassemblies including the ring shroud is the tolerances which must be observed in the manufacturing. In order to maximize the performance of the fan, sufficient efforts should be made to mount the ring shroud very precisely around the fan, that is, there must be consistent clearance or a gap around and in between the entire circumference of the fan outer ring and the ring shroud. Such tolerances must be carefully controlled in order to preserve the performance and reliability of the machine. Not only does the ring shroud facilitate in improving the efficiency of the fan, but the gap between the ring shroud and fan outer ring is necessary to avoid crash conditions between them. Since the fan subassembly is connected to the engine, movement of the engine results in relative movement of the fan subassembly relative to the ring shroud. Consequently, interference may exist which may damage the fan outer ring and the fan vanes, thus the importance of sufficient and consistent gap between the ring shroud and the fan outer ring.
Accordingly, there is a need to ensure that the fan subassembly is mounted accurately and precisely within the ring shroud during manufacturing utilizing a simple system which facilitates the ease of assembly for an installer during the manufacturing process and also requires limited parts to limit costs. The described embodiment is directed to overcoming problems triggered by the variation present in most large scale manufactured parts and associated with mounting the ring shroud with respect to the fan subassembly.